eBay Sellers Sued Over Software Pirating
Some top eBay POWER!!! sellers were recently sued for piracy.
Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc. decided to sue after uncovering evidence that the individuals named in the complaints had completed more than 15,000 sales involving pirated software between October 2005 and December 2005, said Keith Kupferschmid, an executive with the Software & Information Industry Association."It's like playing 'Whack-A-Mole,' " Kupferschmid said. "You take one auction down and then another one pops up."
15,000 seems like a large number of incidental unnoticed sales on one network. Will auctions and search sites eventually be held liable for some of the piracy they enable and profit from?
- Y! MyWeb
Unlikely ...
Courts generally don't impose blanket third party liability without a strong historical analogy to another area where third party liability is imposed. Moreover, courts generally require the third party to have knowledge that the party was engaged in infringement (not general knowledge that infringement occurs) or deliberately induce the third party to infringe. I would bet that Ebay (a) takes measures to ensure that it doesn't reach that level; or (b) terminates auctions if it is aware of infringement by a specific user.
Once eBay solves their
Once eBay solves their piracy issues, they can move on to counterfeit items and stolen goods next.